Twaalfwoorden deel drie

And here it is, the ultimate part in my thought provoking series⁰ on Dutch words (imagine it’s David Attenborough saying it).

9. Bij

This a handy word to have:

·      Er is iemand bij = “There is someone (else) there”/”there is an additional person there.”

·      Ik heb X erbij = “I have it here/with me]”

·      Bijleren means to learn something extra, i.e. something incidentally learned, something that you’d pick up during your day.

The reason I like bij as an modifier to words or sentences is that it’s such an economical way to say that someone is beside you/with you/accompanying you, or that you have some. Or to say that you picked something up. It’s like the linguistic equivalent of a vintage sports car (think original Bond Aston Martin), whereas equivalent English approaches are 80s and 90s era sports cars – kitch and cool in their own way, but sometimes seem to have too much going on.

10. Eenvoudig

Combining two words to get another word, is something I relish seeing in Dutch (and also in German). The meaning of the new word is something easy to infer, intuitive even. They are often built up from common/day-to-day words. Such an elegant synthesis of literal-mindedness and abstraction. Of which this is a wonderful example...¹

Simple. Een (one) and voudig (from vouwen “fold”). Eenvoudig is hands down my favourite etymological discovery in Dutch. I let out a gleeful yelp when I realised which words were the parents of this one. It is an example of an abstract concept being used as the word to represent that concept...² there aren’t many things simpler than a single fold!

11. Woordenschat

Vocabulary. Woorden (words) and schat (treasure). It strikes such a powerful chord… “word treasure.” For me, at least, when I consider this compound word, it gets me to take a moment and consider the words I have learned. To admire them, each an ingot of gold or a precious stone. Compare that to “vocabulary”; Just a bundle of syllables. How… how forgetable.

And of course, to finish with a chuckle.

12.                  Hoeren en uren

Prostitutes and hours… A tricky one for me is the distinction between oe and uu. The first should be pronounced like the like the "oo" in raccoon. The second is similar to the u in “ubiquitous (the first one - it certainly seems to be everywhere in that word...)- but stretch it out to make it a long sound.

Dutch speakers are unforgiving about vowel sounds, the distinction between them is more important than in English.³ It is coming along, but I do have my off moments…

I was chatting at lunch about the hours I spent relaxing in the canteen in college with the lads. They looked at me in surprise and asked me to repeat myself. I did. It turned out what I had said sounded far closer to “prostitutes in the canteen”, all because of a mix-up between those two sounds. We still chuckle about that one. :)

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⁰It certainly provoked my thoughts.ⁱ  :) ¹ Because of the influence of the Normans (French-speaking conquerers of Britain back a 1,000 years ago), many technical/scientific terms follow Romantic naming conventions of using the Latin or Greek.

² Talk about meta! It’s wheels within wheels up in here! If I didn’t want to finish on a laugh, this would have been the kicker!

³ Consonants are kings in the Queen’s. [EDIT: A colleague of mine challenged me in this. And I had to concede that, being an English speaker, I have a much broader experience and exposure to the manifold ways that English can be mis-pronounced; Compared to a Dutch speaker - with significantly fewer foreigners learning it let alone trying to speak it - the skill of inferring what is actually meant by garbled syllables is not as well honed]

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ⁱA friend of mine asked me why I wrote my blog in the first place, if I cared that people wouldn’t get it or thought that something on it was stupid.

I told him that I do it because I get a kick out of it. I’d be lying if I said that I didn't care when people like it or read it...^a,b I get a lot out of putting a post together – in terms of amusement, learning something new,^c and having epiphanies about myself and the world around me.

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^aAs John Donne said:

No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main…^d

^bI mean when they enjoy reading it as well as “liking” it on Facebook.

^cThere is a whole lot of bijleren going on up in here!

^dThe rest of the poem goes on to talk about death and how as a part of mankind each death diminishes us individually… the poem is bookended by two famous lines, the one I quote above about the penninsular status of conscious existence and “And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” As you can see, I am cherry-picking because clearly Mr Donne was referring to something deeper than acceptance and validation. I recommend reading his Wikipedia article; riveting.